


No Exceptions

by story_telling_sage



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Coming Out, Homophobia, M/M, Post 'Calling Home', unsupportive parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-23 22:50:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15616758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/story_telling_sage/pseuds/story_telling_sage
Summary: Bitty finally visits home and finds that it's not really home anymore. Bitty has changed, but Georgia hasn't. The real question is, will his parents be able to handle those changes?





	No Exceptions

**Author's Note:**

> Hi y'all! Finally getting around to posting my reaction fic to "Calling Home." Due to some personal stuff it took me a lot longer than I wanted but here we are! If you think Suzanne's response to in "Calling Home" was amazing and fantastic and you love her, please know I love and respect the way you read the comic, but know this is probably not the fic for you. 
> 
> Warnings for unsupportive parents, allusions to conversion therapy, allusions to depression/suicidal ideation, and good ol' souther passive aggression.

Bitty went home with the words “we’ll figure this out” ringing in his head. It had become a recurring phrase during his stilted phone conversations with his mother. Bitty would be lying if he said the words didn’t scare him, the passive aggressive southerness of it all. “Figuring it out” felt too much like  _ fixing _ and as far as Bitty was concerned there was nothing to figure out or fix. 

He was gay. He had a boyfriend. He had a team he would lead to victory. He was one of the first out captains in the NCAA dating the first openly bisexual alternate captain of a Stanley Cup winning team and he had a family behind him. Just not one bonded in blood. Though, to be fair, there had been plenty of blood. Ransom and Holster on the ice, grinning, bandaging up Nursey’s scraped knees, icing Dex’s knuckles because a Lax bro said something, the accident with Tango in the quads last year. There had been blood, there had been pie, and there had been love and acceptance and everything that was apparently conditional from his family. 

It would have been easier, Bitty thought, if they had disowned him. If his Mama had cried and if his Daddy had judgmentally stared him down and told him “don’t you come home.” But no there were “I love you”s and and “you’ll always be welcome at home” and the fact that no one could actually say the word  _ gay _ . It was drowning in all the things unsaid. The awkward moments when he would say “my boyfriend” and his parents would share a look, would go silent for a second too long. It was finding a pamphlet on “fixing” your gay child under a stack of magazines that one of the ladies from the club brought over. It was his mama’s look when she said “I just hadn’t gotten around to throwing it out yet” and it broke Bitty’s heart to know it was a lie. When people passed him in town and smiled, thin lipped and raised eyebrows, Bitty knew what they were thinking. He’d been facing their judgment all his life but now the ice he was walking on felt thinner than ever. Eric waiting, just waiting for something to crack. On the worst days, on the days it felt like he was better on in the goddamn closet, Bitty thought the things that might crack was him.

And he did. Somewhere between the grocery store and his childhood bedroom he  _ broke _ . Ugly sobbing that made its home in his chest and wanting and wishing not for his mother’s hug but Jack’s strong arms or Lardo’s unyielding support. Bitty found himself wishing for home in the bedroom he used to cry himself to sleep in and realized home was somewhere he didn’t quite know how to find. So he cried, and he cried, and he didn’t try to stop the tears. Once he was cried out, Bitty took a breath. Then another one. He’s been doing this for almost twenty years now. That, more than anything, brought a small smile to Bitty’s face. Almost twenty years. On Bitty’s worst days, he didn’t even think he’d make it past sixteen. But he was here and he knew he deserved so much better than being forced into the skin of that scared kid again.

Taking another deep breath, Bitty made a choice. While his mother was out to lunch with some ladies from the club, Bitty packed. Beyonce posters came down off the walls, his figure skating medals went into boxes, clothes went into his suitcase. He took Mr. Bubbles, Honeybear, and Ms. Sugar and all the rest of his stuffed animals because he was leaving. He was leaving. He couldn’t  _ do this  _ anymore. He couldn’t pretend there was anything to figure out when the thing they insisted there was an answer to was at the core of his very being.  _ You love all of me, or none of me.  _

His truck was packed up by the time his mother got home. He was probably forgetting things but at this point Bitty didn’t care. He couldn’t care. Anything he left behind could be replaced, except maybe his mother’s love. Then again, Bitty thought, as she looked at him with watery blue eyes, he’d probably be able to live without it. 

He thought of Lardo’s strength, of Ransom and Holster’s unyielding support, of Shitty’s openness, Dex’s fierce protection, Cowder’s easy kindness. He thought of his Frogs, his Tadpoles, and the incoming Waffles. He thought of Whiskey coming out to him in the kitchen asking “is this okay?” and Bitty thought, yeah, he could live without it. He wouldn’t be without a family no matter how this conversation went.

Calling it a conversation, perhaps, was generous. 

Suzanne cried, Bitty did not. 

_ You love all of me, or none of me, Mama. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t pretend I’m not gay because it makes you uncomfortable. Because the word burns on your tongue. I can’t stay in the same house where you said the gays didn’t deserve the word marriage, but then you turn around and say you love me, and you’ve always loved me, because you haven’t. I can’t live in this house without an apology that you actually mean because I grew up hating myself and you helped with that, Mama. Can’t you see that? Can’t you see?  _

She didn’t say anything. She just cried. Bitty, in some distant part of his mind, whispered  _ this is my fault _ because he never wanted to make his mother cry but maybe his happiness was worth her tears. Maybe it was time he stopped shoving himself into places he didn’t fit for the sake of this woman who couldn’t look him in the eye.

“Call me when you’re ready to apologize and mean it,” he said. And then he drove. He drove until he was on the outskirts of town and it hit him just exactly what he’d done. So he sat on the side of a Georgia dirt road and didn’t cry. Just sat and let it pass. There was no coming back from this, but then again, Bitty didn’t have any reason to go back anyways. His family was ahead of him, not behind. 

It was a long drive and a night in a more than slightly questionable hotel that Bitty called Jack from. He didn’t go into details right then and Jack didn’t ask, not right then. There would be more questions later, when Jack had Bitty in his arms but for now there was just Jack, talking about practice and their new recruits and how Snowy’s been acting weirder than goalie weird and Bitty let himself get lost in the chatter. With Senor Bun rested in his lap, dressed in one of Jack’s Falcs shirts, with his boyfriend’s voice in his ear it was almost like Bitty was home. In less than 24 hours he would be. In less than 24 hours he would have Jack in his arms and he would move in with his boyfriend and he’d go back to Samwell and he would breathe. 

And then, Bitty would be okay. Because family wasn’t blood, it was his boys who loved all of him. No exceptions. 

**Author's Note:**

> I might write a sequel if anyone's interested and/or if it wants to be interested but for now I'm going to list this as completed. Please let me know what you think! Thanks!


End file.
